0 MSc. in Business Administration - Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Supervisor: dhr. B. (Balazs) Szatmari Second reader: dhr. L. (Liang) Zhao
2016/2017
The Pro-Social Motivation of the Social Entrepreneur:
the role of the “dark triad” in the social entrepreneurship theory
Chiara Lamperti 11375027
1
Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Chiara Lamperti, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
2 Abstract
The aim of this research is to investigate the role of entrepreneurial pro-social motivation on business performance, in the specific, this study will investigate the role of the Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy) on the positive relationship between pro-social motivation and business performance. The research question assumes that specific negative personality traits have different effects on the relationships between Pro-social Motivation and Business Performance (Growth, Efficiency and Profit). Data was collected from 79 Dutch social entrepreneurs. For the analysis, a correlation analysis, a multiple regression and a moderation model were performed. The results show interesting insights: psychopathy has a positive moderating effect on the main relationship. Therefore, social entrepreneurs with highly level of psychopathy seems to obtain superior business performance related to growth. However, for the others constructs, no statistically significance was found but an analysis of the coefficients showed that Machiavellianism and Narcissism have a negative effect on business performance. This study was the first one to combine social entrepreneurs with the dark triad. Even though, not statistically significance was found, this research could be a good starting point for future studies. The findings could help investors to better evaluate social companies using the dark triad as an antecedent of business performances. Moreover, better understandings of the role of dark triad can help foster social enterprises’ development and effectiveness in our economy. The biggest limitation of this study is the nature and the size of the sample that affects the statistically significance of the final results. Keywords: Pro-social motivation, social entrepreneur, dark triad, social entrepreneurship
3 Tables of Contents Abstract ... 2 Introduction ... 5 1. Literature Review ... 8 1.1 Entrepreneurial motivation ... 8
1.2. Pro-social Motivation and Social Entrepreneurship ... 9
1.3. Personality traits ... 10
1.4 Research gaps ... 14
2. Conceptual Model and Research Question ... 16
2.1 Pro-social motivation and entrepreneurial success ... 16
2.2. Narcissism ... 17
2.3 Machiavellianism ... 19
2.4. Psychopathy... 20
2.5 Conceptual Model ... 22
3. Data and Research Method ... 23
3.1 Sample and data collection ... 23
3.2. Measures ... 25 3.3. Analytical strategy ... 25 4. Results ... 28 4.1. Correlation Analysis ... 28 4.2. Directed Effects ... 34 4.3. Moderating Effect... 35 5. Discussion ... 43 6. Conclusion... 47
6.1. Practical and theoretical implications... 47
6.2. Limitations ... 48
6.3. Future research ... 49
References ... 50
4 List of tables and figures
Tables
Table 1: Big Factor Personality Model from (revisited from McCrea and Robert, 1992). ... 11
Table 2: Janus Face of Entrepreneurial Personality (Miller, 2015) ... 12
Table 3: Summary of the demographic information of the 79 responses ... 24
Table 4: Means (M), Standard Deviations (SD) and Correlations ... 27
Table 5: Hierarchical Regression Model of Business Performance Growth ... 28
Table 6: Hierarchical Regression Model of Business Performance Efficiency ... 30
Table 7: Hierarchical Regression Model of Business Performance Profit ... 32
Table 8: Effect of Machiavellianism on Business Performance - Efficiency ... 36
Table 9: Effect of Machiavellianism on Business Performance - Growth ... 36
Table 10: Effect of Machiavellianism on Business Performance - Profit ... 37
Table 11: Effect of Narcissism on Business Performance -Efficiency ... 37
Table 12: Effect of Narcissism on Business Performance - Growth ... 38
Table 13: Effect of Narcissism on Business Performance – Profit ... 38
Table 14: Effect of Psychopathy on Business Performance - Efficiency ... 39
Table 15: Effect of Psychopathy on Business Performance - Growth ... 39
Table 16: Effect of Psychopathy on Business Performance - Profit ... 40
Figure Figure 1: Conceptual Model ... 22
5 Introduction
According to the definition provided by Schumpeter (1934, cited in Cantner et al., 2017), the entrepreneur is a quite special actor willing to break through traditional structures and to challenge the accepted way of doing things. The Schumpeter-type entrepreneur is individualistic, self-directed, has an inner drive to innovate, and seeks autonomy and independence from other people in order to be in control of one’s own destiny (Cantner et al., 2017). If we follow this definition, it seems that the entrepreneur is inspired and stimulated by an individualistic need of achievement, power and intention to get successful. But is it could be too limited?
Recent studies of entrepreneurial motivations have been conducted to identify the factors that inspire entrepreneurs such as need of achievement, risk-taking, locus of control, self-efficacy, goal setting, independence, egoistic passion and social interests (Shane et al., 2003). It is not surprising that psychological studies have also reached the entrepreneurship theory. Entrepreneurs are playing a central role in our economy system and, therefore, the term entrepreneur has become popular towards academics in the past twenty years. Moreover, the entrepreneurship is a field of research that could involve different approaches. For example, researchers have studied the challenges faced by entrepreneurs, how they recognize innovative opportunities as well as entrepreneurial motivation and what is the reasons behind the decision to become an entrepreneur.
One aspect of this research is to study entrepreneurial motivation. However, the majority of entrepreneurial motivations studies mainly focused on economic, financial and self-achievement motivations and only few have considered pro-social motivation and its role in the entrepreneurship theory. Social entrepreneur is the term used for indicating those types of entrepreneurs who engage a variety of activities, with the purpose of solving social problems. Those individuals are not performing charity. Like traditional entrepreneurs, they create sustainable value but in this case, with the aim of improving social well-beings. Some scholars suggested that the role of the social entrepreneur is crucial for the entire theory. He or she is viewed as the initiator of a social entrepreneurial endeavor and as the innovator who imagines and pushes through social innovations and processes of social change (Swedberg, 2009; Ziegler, 2010, cited in Choi and Mujumdar, 2014). However, the concept of the social entrepreneur is itself not free from ambiguity (Choi & Majumdar, 2014) as well as the notion of social entrepreneurship. Therefore, the pro-social motivation of those entrepreneurs will be used as mainly variable of analysis.
The second aspect that it will discussed in this study connected to entrepreneurial motivation, is personality traits. Prior research provided a basis for theorizing the connection between specific personality traits and the likelihood to choose an entrepreneurial career and their influence in the
6 entrepreneurial process. However, previous studies usually investigated the effect of socially desirable accepted personality traits (such as extraversion, conscientiousness etc.) as predictors of entrepreneurial actions and only few researchers had taken into consideration the “dark side” of an entrepreneur. This new research trend (Miller, 2014; Kloz and Neubaum, 2015; DiNisi, 2015) stated that entrepreneurs have multifaceted personalities, with positive traits potentially having a dark side, and dark traits potentially having a bright side (Judge, Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009). They also suggested that negative personality traits usually have important roles in the entrepreneurial intention (decide to start a new venture) and later in the entrepreneurial process. However, this new trend of studies is still underdeveloped and hotly debated. Therefore, the aim of this research is to add the role of negative personality traits in the relationship between pro-social motivation and business performance. As some research proved, (Miller, 2014; Kloz and Neubaum, 2015; DiNisi, 2015; Judge, Piccolo, & Kosalka, 2009) negative personality traits are not necessary negative as long as they will help entrepreneurs (in this case, social entrepreneurs) to remain motivated and pursue their goals. For example, a narcissist wants to be praised and recognized for his or her work but that does not mean that he or she will engage in deviance to achieve these ends (Kloz and Neubaum, 2015). A low level of these kind of personality traits could be useful even for social entrepreneur, who are not led by power or profit motivations. Therefore, an analysis of the influence of some dark (negative) personality traits on pro-social motivation will be take into consideration in the conceptual model.
In conclusion, the thesis is addressed to study entrepreneurial pro-social motivation in a new perspective and apply it to the social entrepreneur. Consequently, the ultimate goal of this thesis will be to improve the literature of pro-social motivation with new insights and, at the same time, to provide new understanding to the theory of the social entrepreneurship. Learn social entrepreneur’s personality traits and their effect on pro-social motivation could be beneficial for converting those insights into superior business performance. Better understandings of the role of dark triad on pro-social motivation can help foster pro-social enterprises’ development and effectiveness in our economy. Having the “just enough” amount of negative personality traits will be explained why some social entrepreneurs are more likely to succeed compare to other. To sum up, the thesis will have an academic relevance and rigor because more understanding and insights are needed to improve the overall theory. The findings could add new insights and reveal new relationships between psychological factors and pro-social motivation, which should be less biased compared to data from traditional research methods such as interviews. In addition, it could also be relevant from a managerial perspective because it could help social entrepreneurs and managers to select and hire people really motivate by social issues. Moreover, this study could be useful for investors as well.
7 Social investors and investors in general, are usually worried about the effectiveness of their investments. The use of pro-social motivation and the dark triad as predictors of success could be valuable for potential investor of social companies. At last, as pointed out by Yitshaki and Kropp, 2016) in their research, social entrepreneurs have little business experience. These entrepreneurs usually identify a problem based on their personal experience and crafted a solution to that. Understanding the dark triad and its role on pro-social motivation could be useful for develop programs aimed to those entrepreneurs in mastering business aspects of social entrepreneurship. In the following sections, an investigation of the role pro-social motivation in the social entrepreneurship theory will be discussed using the Dark Triad (Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy) as variable of analysis. Followed by a description of the research method and procedure as well as a general discussion about the results, limitations of the study and suggestions for future research lines.
8 1. Literature Review
1.1 Entrepreneurial motivation
Understanding how entrepreneurs recognize opportunities or how they create innovation are just few examples that have been considered while studying the theory of entrepreneurship. But what are the real reasons behind an individual who decide to pursue a career as an entrepreneur?
The role of human agency related to entrepreneurial motivation is not as developed as others themes due to the nature of this topic. Some criticisms have been made; however, even psychologists who have argued strongly against the usefulness of trait-based research in entrepreneurship implicitly acknowledge that motivation must matter to this process (Shane et al., 2003). That is one of the reasons why, to better comprehend the entrepreneurship theory, some scholars studied the relationship between motivation and the entrepreneurial actions. In addition, some academics tried to identify personality traits that would uniquely define an entrepreneur (Carsrud & Brännback, 2011). However, it was not easy to define them with certainty and this line of research was quickly abandoned.
For the aim of this thesis, the definition provided by Mitchell (1982) will be used because it better emphasized what motivation originates from. The term motivation is a set of psychological processes that cause the arousal, direction, and persistence of voluntary actions that are goal directed. (Mitchell, 1982). First of all, motivation is an individual and unique phenomenon different from person to person and second, motivation is usually described as an intentional process that includes all the actions the individual has chosen to do. According to Carsrud & Brännback (2011), entrepreneurial motivation theories can be divided in two groups. The first one is called drive theories (push factors) which include all the internal stimulus that drive the person to pursued a particular goal. The second group, so-called incentive theories (pull factors), refers to all individual characteristics that emphasize motivational pull, like achievement motivation. However, in the literature, these entrepreneurial motivation theories result with insufficient consideration in the role of human agency in the entrepreneurial process. (Shane et al., 2003). Basically, the major entrepreneurial motivations that prior research suggested are the following (Shane et al., 2003): (1) need for achievement, (2) risk taking, (3) tolerance for ambiguity, (4) locus of control, (5) independence, (6) drive, (7) egoistic passion, (8) goal setting, (9) self-efficacy, (10) improvement social status, (11) contribution to community welfare.
These results about entrepreneurial motivations are too limited and generalized especially because they do not enter in the specific in the mind of entrepreneurs. For example, is it possible that the
9 need of achievement derives from something else intrinsic in the individual? A possible answer to this gap could be that personality traits have a direct (or indirect) role to entrepreneurial motivation.
1.2. Pro-social Motivation and Social Entrepreneurship
One of the most occurring entrepreneurial motivation was the necessity to contribute to the community welfare and improve the social development of human beings. This type of motivation is also called pro-social motivation, which refers to the desire to expend effort in order to benefit other people. It is important to underline that pro-social motivation is not the same as altruism, which refers to a concern for others, not a concern for others at the expense of self-interest (De Dreu, 2006, cited in Grant, 2008). Pro-social motivation highlights the social aspect of work by emphasizing individuals’ concerns about how their actions can affect others’ wellbeing (Grant, 2008).
The previous studies on pro-social motivation applied in entrepreneurship and management environment mainly focused on its role in the management process, leadership and human resources field. For example, some scholars primarily studied the role of incentives for social behaviors of managers and its effect on employees’ job satisfaction and employees’ teamwork (Grant and Berry, 2011). While, others studied the decision of business owners to implement environmental and sustainability behaviors in their existing ventures (Bendell, 2014). Nevertheless, only few studies emphasized the role of pro-social motivation in the entrepreneurship theory. Therefore, is not surprising, that social entrepreneurship has become an increasingly important international cultural phenomenon (Dacin et al, 2011). The area of social entrepreneurship is particularly appealing because of its interdisciplinary focus as it intersects a number of boundaries drawing explicitly from anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology. (Dacin et al., 2011). However, it remains a line of research with some concerns due to the nature of the topic. The biggest problem is that researchers are struggling to delineate boundaries in the field and consequently to came up with significant and meaningful research questions.
What it sure is that the process of social entrepreneurship originates from a personal mission: the desire to trigger a change or social transformation. By pursuing material goals and aims, social entrepreneurs' mission is to make a profound contribution to society. To achieve their aims, social entrepreneurs mobilize resources to resolve social problems and satisfy basic human needs (Rey-Martí, 2015). Indeed, social entrepreneurship not only generates social value, but also creates jobs and wealth. Within the last decade, an increasing number of social entrepreneurship centers have been set up at universities all over the world, and new scientific journals on social entrepreneurship,
10 social enterprise, and social innovation have been launched. Also, the number of conferences and special issues in scientific journals devoted to the topic has increased significantly. In addition, governments have started supporting social entrepreneurship by establishing new organizational frameworks in order to encourage the formation of new social entrepreneurial initiatives and by providing funding to these initiatives. Despite these facts, scholars and practitioners are far from reaching a consensus as to what social entrepreneurship actually means (Choi & Majumdar, 2014). Probably, a good starting point could be to analyze personality traits and their influence on pro-social motivation. Consequently, a research of relevant peer reviewed articles in the applied psychology field has been done in order to analyze the relationship between entrepreneurial motivation and personality traits.
1.3. Personality traits
The concepts of personality and personality traits both in psychological research and in common sense understanding are rather fuzzy (Brandstätter, 2011). Personality traits are usually seen as predictable characteristics of individual behavior which assist in explaining the differences of individual actions in similar situation (Llewellyn and Wilson, 2003 cited Koe Hwee Nga and Shamuganathan, 2010). Personality traits include abilities (e.g., general intelligence), motives (e.g., need for achievement), attitudes (including values), and characteristics of temperament as overarching style of a person’s experiences and actions (Big Five Model - OCEAN) (Brandstätter, 2011). It is not surprising that personality traits have been studied in different field of research and as well as in the entrepreneurship theory. However, if we talk about entrepreneurial traits, they are viewed as causes of mental and behavioral processes.
The majority of the studies about the relation between personality traits and entrepreneur’s motivation focused on entrepreneurial intention stage, the step in which the individual decide to become an entrepreneur. For example, studies on individual’s personalities and their behaviors toward establishing businesses emphasized that psychological traits stimulate individuals to establish businesses (Espíritu-Olmos and Sastre-Castillo, 2015). Those individuals have high level of need for inner control and achievement, great propensity for risk taking and great tolerance for ambiguity. In addition, Lee and Tsang (2001) demonstrated that there is a strong dependence of venture capitalist on personality and experience, and less dependence on the market, product, and strategy when assessing the viability of an investment. This study concluded that personality traits play an important role in the entrepreneurial process from the very beginning. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that certain aspects of the personality of entrepreneurs have a very considerable
11 impact on the strategies, structures, and performance of firms (Miller, 2015). Moreover, Zhao et al. (2010) conducted a set of meta-analysis to examine the relationship between personality and the outcomes associated within two different stages of the entrepreneurial process: entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial performance. They concluded that personality plays a role in the emergence and success of entrepreneurs. Since, entrepreneurs differ from other groups of people such as managers or employees; they need a diverse field of studies. Therefore, Zhao et al. (2010) used the Five Factor Model as basis for their conceptual model by adding one more dimension: risk propensity. This study provided evidences that four of the Big Five personality dimensions are related to both entrepreneurial intentions and entrepreneurial performance (agreeableness failing to be associated in the entrepreneurial process).
With these new insights, a deeper understanding of the so-called Big Five Personality Model (Five Factor Model) was necessary to see if this model was suitable for the research. The Five Factor Model was developed independently by different academics but the McCrae and Robert’s (1992) version is the most well-known and accepted towards academics. This model, maybe for the first time, gave personality psychology a replicable phenomenon to be explained (McCrae and Robert, 1992). Personality traits can be grouped into five dimensions in which the Five Factors Model is based on and they are: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. The five dimensions can be summarized in the following table (Table1) (revisited from McCrea and Robert, 1992):
Low Score Dimensions High Score
More Practical, Follow the Rules, Routine
Openness: open to experience
Artistic, Curious, Imaginative, Ideas, Values Careless, Confused,
Disorganized
Conscientiousness: grade of self-control
Efficient, Hard Work, Organized, Responsible, Quiet, Reserved, More
Negative Emotions
Extroversion:
relations with the external world
Active, Energetic, outgoing, Talkative
Critical, Doubtful Agreeableness:
accept the others
Kind, Helpful, Trusting
Calm, Self confidence Neuroticism:
tendency of negative emotions
Unstable, Anxious, Tense
Table 1: Big Factor Personality Model from (revisited from McCrea and Robert, 1992).
To each factor corresponds specific personality traits if the level of the dimension is high or low. The model is useful because it provides a set of tools that can be used by psychologists in many different fields and it can be used to predict behaviors, even though, the number and the nature of
12 valid personality traits is still fiercely debated. However, the model is comprehensive, efficient and provides a good starting point in personality studies. Therefore, the Five Factor Model was used a base for developing the conceptual model that it will be shown in the next section. In addition, prior studies investigate which personality traits from the Big Five model better describe social entrepreneurs. “Agreeableness” seems to be the most important personality trait since these entrepreneurs usually empathize with the people suffering from social problems. In addition, also “openness” was proved to be statistically significant and support the thesis that they both have a positive and efficient effect on pro-social motivation. (İrengün, and Arıkboğa, 2015)
However, the entrepreneurship literature about the individual characteristic focused mainly on their positive traits and less their “dark side”. An interesting discussion about this topic started with the paper of Miller (2015). The author claimed that scholars in studies related to entrepreneurial personalities, capabilities etc., usually ignored the negative aspects of the entrepreneur’s personality. Since the role of an entrepreneur is mostly associated with an active role to the contribution of economic growth and national employment, scholars tended to study mainly the positive characteristics of the individual such as energy, self-confidence, need of achievement and independence (Miller, 2015). Studies have shown that an entrepreneur is usually a person that needs for achievement, autonomy, power, and independence (McClelland 1961, 1975, 1987, cited in Miller, 2015), self-esteem (Arora, Haynie, & Laurence, 2011, cited in Miller, 2015), passion for the mission (Cardon, Zietsma, Saparito, Matherne, & Davis, 2005, cited in Miller, 2015), and eudemonic vigor (Hahn, Frese, Binnewies, & Schmitt, 2012, cited in Miller, 2015). On the contrary, Miller (2015) claimed that all characteristics mentioned above are just Janus-faced (double faced). The following table (Table 2) summarizes the concept of Miller (2015) and shows the Janus-face of those positive personality traits which taken to the extreme could lead to negative extreme behaviors.
Positive Characteristics Negative Characteristics
Energy, passion and optimism Grandiosity and overconfidence Self-efficacy and self-assurance Narcissism and hubris Need of achievement and power Aggressiveness and ruthlessness
Independence and autonomy Social deviance and indifference to others Need to control and dominance Obsessive behavior, mistrusts and suspicion
13 The discussion continues with the work of DeNisi (2015) which wanted to expand the study of Miller (2015). DeNisi argued the point of view of Miller (2015) and claimed that instead of analyzed the “dark-side” of entrepreneur’s personality traits, it would be better and relevant to think about “excessively high levels” of these traits as being predictors of entrepreneurial intentions. Consequently, he suggested that future research should find out if there is an optimum level where the person will try, and be likely to succeed. In addition, DeNisi (2015) stated that there are probably several other contextual variables that can contribute to the probability of success and one of them is the motivation. The final article related to this discussion is from Klotz and Neubaum (2016). They fully support Miller’s argument that organizational sciences often overlook the “dark side” of the entrepreneur and agree that entrepreneurship scholarship would benefit from more research. However, they also think, like DeNisi (2015), that there is a huge potential for studies of personality to contribute to the entrepreneurship literature.
Still, Miller (2015) was not the first one to explore the dark side of an entrepreneur. A new movement was already started to investigate the darker side of entrepreneurship theory (Baron, Zhao, and Miao 2015; DeNisi 2015; Klotz and Neubaum 2016; Shepherd, Patzelt, and Baron 2013; Webb et al. 2009 cited by Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). This new movement is based on the following question: “Are there dark psychological characteristics and unproductive motives (e.g., a desire to appropriate value) that drive persons’ intentions to enter into entrepreneurship?” (Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). This question is particularly important because organizations are usually believed to be founded based on value creation and not value appropriation. This new perspective could give more understandings in the entrepreneurship theory.
The most common and studied “dark” personality traits are Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy which together form the Dark Triad, term coined by Paulhus and Williams (2002). The authors studied the correlations between the three constructs. The measures were moderately inter-correlated, but certainly were not equivalent and they also conducted a study about their relations with the Big Five model. Their locations in the five-factor space of personality revealed only one commonality across the triad, namely, low agreeableness (Paulhus and Williams, 2002).
Other authors followed this trend and added the notion of Dark Triad in the entrepreneurship field. An interesting paper is the one from Hmieleski and Lerner (2016) which studied the relationships between the dark triad personality characteristics with entrepreneurial intentions and motives for starting a new business. The final results show a consistent pattern in which Narcissism was positively related to entrepreneurial intentions, and psychopathy and Machiavellianism being neither over- nor under-represented characteristics in those with entrepreneurial intentions
14 (Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). On the contrary, for individuals who were at the beginning of their entrepreneurial process (early-stage nascent entrepreneurs), the results indicate a different pattern: psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with unproductive entrepreneurial motives (value-appropriation) and psychopathy was negatively related to productive entrepreneurial motives (value-creating) (Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). Narcissism was the only individual facet of the dark triad that had a significant relationship with entrepreneurial intentions while psychopathy and Machiavellianism were not found to be significant individual predictors of entrepreneurial intentions. Being a narcissist seems to have a great influence in starting a new venture especially because entrepreneurial success is always uncertain. Individuals with high level of narcissism tend to have underlying (over)confidence and attention-seeking characteristics that help them to decide to start a new company and success in it. On the other hand, psychopathy and Machiavellianism seem to be more relevant after the individual become an entrepreneur. By adding potential negative or dark individual characteristics it is possible to see that some individuals tend to have unproductive motives aimed at appropriating value rather than creating it. These new insights could explain unsolved problems in the entrepreneurship field. In addition, the authors suggested that future research should see the effect of the dark triad on new venture survival and performance. Having the “just enough” of the dark triad characteristics may be helpful (or adaptive) with respect to certain aspects of entrepreneurship such as resource mobilization, resistance to stress and even innovation (Jonason, Koenig, and Tost 2010; Jonason, Li, and Teicher 2010, cited by Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). It could be useful and interesting to extent the relationship of the dark triad to all the entrepreneurial process and not only in its early stages.
At the same time, no one made a similar study choosing the social entrepreneur as a sample. Since the aim of social entrepreneurs is use the resource available in order to resolve social problems and satisfy basic human needs, it could be interesting to see if these individuals show the same pattern of negative personality characteristics as classic entrepreneurs.
1.4 Research gaps
The literature review about entrepreneurial motivation gave me the following research gaps. First of all, studies in entrepreneurial motivation are too limited and focused. Research suggested that individuals who engage entrepreneurial behavior are driven by need of achievement, risk taking, tolerance for ambiguity, locus of control, independence, drive, egoistic passion, goal setting, self-efficacy, improvement social status and contribution to community welfare (Shane et al., 2003). However, can these motivations be a consequence of intrinsic characteristic of an individual’s
15 personality? Second, not the same attention has been given to study social entrepreneurs and pro-social motivation. The topic is still undeveloped. Third, studies of personality traits in the entrepreneurship theory mainly focused in the early stages of the entrepreneurial process and at last, these studies took into consideration only positive personality traits such as optimism, self-efficacy etc. Since entrepreneurs with their ventures provide employment, innovation and tax revenues, it is logical to focus on the positive. However, recently, a new movement begun to explore the darker side of entrepreneurship.
To sum up, personality traits could be predicators of specific entrepreneurial motivations as well as a way to explain and improve the theory of social entrepreneurship. Therefore, in the following section, I elaborate a conceptual model that connects the three arguments discussed early Pro-social motivation, the Dark Triad and the Social Entrepreneur. Four hypothesizes have been developed regarding the relationships between the three constructs.
16 2. Conceptual Model and Research Question
Considering the definition of social entrepreneurs and discussion about the Dark Triad of personality in the previous section, the conceptual model elaborated is addressed to answer the following research question: what are the effects of dark (negative) personality traits of social entrepreneurs on business performance?. This study will analyze how the dark triad interacts with the positive relationship between pro-social motivation and social entrepreneurial success. In addition, as stated in the previous section, Agreeableness and Openness from the Big Five model were found to be positive related with pro-social motivation and social vision. These results were useful for developing the hypothesis.
2.1 Pro-social motivation and entrepreneurial success
Social entrepreneurs have been identified as having traits and motivation that are partly shared and partly different from those of classic entrepreneurs (Sastre-Castillo et. al, 2015). Pro-social motivation is one of the biggest differences. The term identifies the motivation of individuals who want to create social value rather than personal or shareholder wealth. In other words, they have the desire of helping or contributing to other people (Batson, 1987; Grant, 2007 cited by Renko, 2013). However, this social motivation is not non-compatible with self-interested or financial motivation. Previous research linked pro-social motivation to a number of possible outcomes, such as higher job performance, personal initiative, and organizational citizenship behaviors (De Dreu & Nauta; Grant & Sumanth, 2009, cited in Renko, 2013), production of ideas that are useful to future generations (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992, cited in Renko, 2013), increased well-being (Weinstein & Ryan, 2010, cited in Renko, 2013), and group creativity and innovation (De Dreu, Nijstad, Bechtoldt, & Baas, 2011, cited in Renko, 2013). Other studies suggested that individuals with high level of pro-social motivation (for example, having a direct contact with the beneficiaries of his/her work) thank to their experiences become emotionally charged and consequently, they are more affectively engaged in their companies (Grant, 2008). In addition, intense personal involvement to acquire first-hand knowledge and diversifying social contacts were characteristics of successful entrepreneurs (Katre and Salipante, 2012). Still, Grant and Berry (2011) found out that pro-social motivation led to individuals to be more creative in generalizing useful ideas. Indeed, the authors proved that pro-social motivation strengthens the association between intrinsic motivation and creativity. Social entrepreneurs not only create something novel but also, they create something useful to others and these two elements are key factors of their entrepreneurial actions.
17 To sum up, prior research has shown that pro-social motivation plays a major role in establishing a new social venture: this motivation helps to transform social entrepreneurial intentions in to actual actions such as acquire financial resources, attract workforce etc. In other words, pro-social motivation is the set of psychological process that directs, energizes and sustains action (Renko, 2012). Since motivations and goals drive actions, I expected that high level of pro-social motivation lead to obtaining superior business performance in efficiency, growth and profit, and providing all the pre-conditions to survive for a long period of time. Indeed, even though specific goals and missions of a social venture may evolve as it grows and ages, it seems likely that the pro-social motivation of social entrepreneurs remains strong. (Renko, 2012). One of the aims of this study is to prove that entrepreneurs who are highly pro-socially motivated exploit better business opportunities. Therefore, the first hypothesis assumes that individuals, who highly engage the social cause/s of their business, are more likely to survive and succeed. Indeed, an intense personal involvement (high level of prosocial motivation) is the major predictor of business performance (Katre and Salipante, 2012: Grant, 2008). Pro-social motivation and social entrepreneur’s personality provide the impetus that drive high level of commitment, passions, innovativeness and social interactions and consequently it will positive affect business performance in the short and long run:
Hypothesis 1: Pro-social motivation positively affects Business Performance
As described before, pro-social motivation plays a major role in converting social dedication into superior performance. However, this relationship is moderated by three constructs: Narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy.
2.2. Narcissism
The term narcissism describes individuals who are self-centered and continually seeking for attentions and admiration by others (Twenge et al. 2008, cited by Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). Those individuals present also charismatics traits, excellent skills of acquiring resource and they usually able to get others to adopt their plans and/or their point of view. Narcissists exhibit an unusually high level of self-love, believing that they are uniquely special and entitled to praise and admiration (Judge et al, 2009).
The social entrepreneur’s personality is important since social entrepreneur are typically confronted with so much information, ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction. His/her personality determines how external information, conditions, and stimuli are filtered, interpreted, and finally incorporated
18 into a decision (Hambrick and Mason, 1984 cited by Engelen et al. 2013). Previous studies that combine entrepreneurs and personality traits showed that entrepreneurship attracts individuals with greater narcissistic personality than other vocational choices (Mathieu and St-Jean, 2013). In the specific, narcissistic behaviors are usually used to explain entrepreneurial intentions. For example, the studies of Hmieleski and Lerner (2016) prove that narcissism has a positive role in the entrepreneurial process from the very beginning. The findings could be explained because narcissistic entrepreneurs are focused on success and achievement and they are not afraid of failure (Elliot and Thrash, 2001 cited by Mathieu and St-jean, 2013). Since the role of an entrepreneur is associated with high level of uncertainty, those individuals need high level of self-confidence, leadership and agentic behaviors. In addition, they are more likely to engage risk-taking behaviors (such as starting a new venture) thanks to high level of over-confidence. In fact, literature has proven that entrepreneurs show higher degrees of overconfidence when compared with managers (Koellinger, Minniti, & Schade, 2007, cited by Mathieu and St-Jean, 2013).
Narcissism is a multifaceted personality traits but it the best one used to describe CEOs and entrepreneurs. Those individuals tend to have the following characteristics: superiority, entitlement, and constant need for attention and admiration (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2011, cited by Engelen et al. 2013) Some characteristics of narcissistic social entrepreneurs can be expected to facilitate the relationship between pro-social motivation and superior business performance. For example, the desire of superiority can lead entrepreneurs to be more open to novel solution and experimenting, and, addition, they are more capable of changing and allocate better business resources. Still, superiority and self-admiration can drive to extreme goal orientation behavior and therefore obtaining superior business performance. The drive for glory and applause has the same positive effects on business performance: narcissistic entrepreneurs are more likely to take entrepreneurial action (for example be the first mover) and promote their projects publicly with more pleasure and effectiveness. On the other hand, there are some characteristics of narcissism that could weaken the relationship between pro-social motivation and successful social entrepreneur. Narcissistic entrepreneur due to their tendency of superiority can create a hostile working environment. In this way, this kind of entrepreneurs fails to stimulate employee’s intellectual and only create a culture of “yes-men” (Engelen et al., 2013). Moreover, narcissistic leaders tend to more likely interpret information with a self-serving bias and make decision based on how those decisions will reflect on their reputation (Judge et al, 2009). Even though, Narcissism has this paradoxical nature, research show that narcissistic entrepreneur’s ability to react strategically is the major component of successful entrepreneurial company. (Engelen et al., 2013). The study conducted by Engelen et al. (2013) showed that narcissism has a negative effect on entrepreneurial performance; however, they
19 also noticed that narcissism is beneficial for entrepreneurial firms when market concentration or dynamism is strong. Therefore, I hypnotize that narcissism has positive moderating effects on the relationship between pro-social motivation and Business Performance. Since social entrepreneur different from the classic entrepreneur or CEOs, having the just right amount of narcissism could lead to beneficial consequences such as: better allocation of resources, react strategically and promoting business’s projects more efficiently. In summary, the pro-social motivation of social entrepreneurs tends to be stronger with high level of narcissism. Thank to narcissism, social entrepreneurs are more goal-oriented and more advocated to their social causes which lead to obtaining superior business performance.
Therefore, the study will first investigate the positive moderating role of narcissism on the positive relationship between pro-social motivation and the business performance. High level of narcissism seems to enhance the positive effect on pro-social motivation.
Hypothesis 2a: The positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business Performance is moderated positively by Narcissism, so that this relationship is stronger for higher values of Narcissism.
2.3 Machiavellianism
Machiavellianism is the term used for identifying individuals with personality characterized by cunning, manipulation and the use of any means necessary to achieve one’s individual ends. (Judge et al., 2009). People with high level of Machiavellianism are driven by the belief that the ends justify the means and they also have a strong need for money, power and competition. Other trait associated with Machiavellianism is the desire to win at the expense of others which could lead to extreme social deviant behavior like lying, stealing or cheating. Machiavellians entrepreneurs need aggressively competition and they also need to fast acquire amount of wealth and power for their businesses. This personality trait justified questionable competitive tactics and behaviors that characterize their short-term view of power and success (Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016). As narcissism, entrepreneurship seems to attract individuals with Machiavellian traits. Indeed, high Machiavellian leaders show considerable flexibility in handling structured and unstructured tasks, they are directive and are often described as charismatic (Deluga, 2001; Drory & Gluskinos, 1980 cited by Judge et al., 2009). In addition, people scoring high on Machiavellianism scales have been found to be more successful than low scorers because of their ability to focus on the best winning strategy in difficult situations where improvisation is required (Fehr, Samsom & Paulhus 1992).
20 However, even though, high level of Machiavellianism has been proved to be present in classic entrepreneur’s personality (Hmieleski and Lerner, 2016), Machiavellianism seems discordant with the definition of social entrepreneur. These kinds of entrepreneurs are not motivated by money, power or personal success. In addition, individuals who become social entrepreneurs are not solely concerned about their self but rather fell concern for other people and how to try to solve social problems. As Christie and Geis (1970) pointed out, Machiavellian individuals pose a kind of cool detachment that makes them emotionally less concerned with others. Therefore, I hypnotize that social entrepreneurs with high pro-social motivation (high emotionally attachment and involvement in their social cause) score low level of Machiavellianism. In other words, I predicted that Machiavellianism weakens the positive relationship between pro-social motivation and Business Performance. The more the social entrepreneur has low level of Machiavellianism, the more he or she will be involved and attached to his/her social business. This will lead to enhance their pro-social motivation on obtaining superior business performance. Even though, Machiavellianism is associated with high level of tenacity and competitiveness, these outcomes could only obfuscate negatively their social mission, judgement and decision-making process. If social entrepreneur present highly level of Machiavellianism (search for power, competition, short-time success), this trait of their personality could not be satisfied by starting and leading a social company and therefore it could only weaken the relationship between pro-social motivation and superior business performance. Social company usually occupied market niches by offering products and services that satisfy basic needs and are not offered by public or private for-profit institutions, perhaps due to a perception of excessive risk for anticipated profit (Mair and Marti, 2006 cited by Sastre-Castillo et. al, 2015). Consequently, pro-social motivation is fueled by other personality traits and not by Machiavellianism.
Therefore, these are main reasons why the third hypothesis assumes that Machiavellianism negatively affects the social entrepreneurship process:
Hypothesis 2b: The positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business Performance is moderated negatively by Machiavellianism, so that this relationship is stronger for lower values of Machiavellianism.
2.4. Psychopathy
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy, manipulation and callousness (Hare and Neumman, 2006 cited by Akthar et al. 2013). Individuals with high in psychopathy tend to lack normal levels of emotional arousal. In other words, they experience
21 limited superficial and primal emotions which could be combined with cynicism. It is important to underline that those people don’t lack of cognitive empathy (understanding what drives people) and therefore they usually tend to take advantage of others. Indeed, different studies showed that psychopathy individuals can be easily found in high-level corporate positions (Mullins-Sweatt, Glover, Derefinko, Miller, & Widiger, 2010, cited by Akthar et. al) thank to their capacity of manipulate, extorts and abuse others, without being found out. In addition, they better perform in stressful situations and remain focus, while other people under the same conditions, will be more likely to breakdown. Other characteristics of those people are (1) to enjoy going against status quo, (2) to get bored easily, and (3) to dislike social norms in the corporate setting. Moreover, psychopathy has been found to have negative correlations with the five-factor model trait of Agreeableness (r = .39; Lee & Ashton, 2005 cited by Akthar et al. 2013). Like Machiavellianism, psychopaths are attracted by power, prestige and control with could lead to a predominant tendency of short-time decision making in order to maximize their own wealth and power.
With the same reasons proposed for the construct Machiavellianism, also psychopathy seems incompatible with the definition of social entrepreneur. High level of psychopathy (lack of empathy) has negative effect on pro-social motivation. Individuals high in psychopathy are usually driven and focused, but in the same time, those people show a little regard to another’s feeling or emotions. Therefore, the last hypothesis assumes that psychopathy has a negativity effect on the positive relationships between pro-social motivation and Business Performance. I developed this hypothesis also because studies on social entrepreneurial personality showed a correlation between Agreeableness and pro-social motivation while studies on psychopathy and the Big Five model showed no such relationship between psychopathy and Agreeableness. In addition, other research investigates the psychopathy could be desirable for the entrepreneurial success, however the results showed that psychopathy can promote an individual to power and success in the short-run but this effect could be detrimental in the long-term.
High level of psychopathy weakens the effectiveness of pro-social motivation because individuals are motivated by other reasons not related by social issue. Therefore, I conclude that psychopathy has a negative moderating effect on the positive relationship between pro-social motivation and Business Performance
Hypothesis 2c: The positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business Performance is moderated negatively by Psychopathy, so that this relationship is stronger for lower values of Psychopathy.
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2.5 Conceptual Model
The research question and the hypothesizes are made with the assumption that some negative personality traits – Narcissism, Psychopathy and Machiavellianism - have different effects on the three aspects of Business Performance (Growth, Efficiency and Profit). If we follow the results and the implication of the work of Hmieleski and Lerner (2016), the Dark Triad seems to have an influence in the entrepreneurial process. In the specific, Narcissism is not only important for starting a new company, but also for keeping the venture alive and successful. Therefore, a similar study will be conducted to investigate the effects on Narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy in social entrepreneurs with high level of pro-social motivation. The variables and their relationships are shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Conceptual Model
Each arrow consists in specific hypotheses which are the following:
- Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business performance
- Hypothesis 2a: The positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business Performance is moderated positively by Narcissism, so that this relationship is stronger for higher values of Narcissism.
- Hypothesis 2b: The positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business Performance is moderated negatively by Machiavellianism, so that this relationship is stronger for lower values of Machiavellianism.
- Hypothesis 2c: The positive relationship between Pro-Social Motivation and Business Performance is moderated negatively by Psychopathy, so that this relationship is stronger for lower values of Psychopathy.
The control variables (covariates) analyzed were: (1) age, (2) gender, (3) nationality, (4) level of education and (5) years of business experience.
Pro-social Motivation Business Performance
- Efficiency - Growth - Profit H2c (-) H2b (-) Narcissism H1 (+) H2a (+) Psychopathy Machiavellianism
23 3. Data and Research Method
This research has an explanatory nature. To answer the previous research question, a quantitative study by means of a survey was performed. The use of a cross-sectional survey design fits perfectly due to the nature of the topic (personality traits). One survey will be submitted to entrepreneurs who corresponded to the definition of social entrepreneur provided by the literature review. The survey was conducted in English.
3.1 Sample and data collection
The population of interest of this study is social entrepreneurs operating in the Netherlands. Amsterdam is one of city with the biggest offering of ecosystems, networks and business preconditions to social entrepreneurs with an active social community. In addition, in 2011, McKinsey published its first report on social enterprise in the Netherlands and the results were remarkable. Over the last five years, the social enterprise sector in the Netherlands grew by 2,000-2,500 enterprises to 5,000-6,000, expanding the sector by about 70% and representing ~1% of the total increase in the number of all companies since 2010. About 3,000 new enterprises started since 2011, generating a year-on-year growth of 20%. (Keizer et al. 2016). The respondents were randomly selected and contacted directly through e-mail and/or by calls. Thanks to the Social Enterprises NL, the research of social entrepreneurs in the Netherlands was faster. The Social Enterprise NL is a community of over 300 social enterprises active in 16 business sectors that provides support to social business in the Netherlands. This community was a useful source for contacting those entrepreneurs. A questionnaire survey was developed to obtain their opinions about pro-social motivation, psychopathy, Narcissism and Machiavellianism. 312 surveys were sent through e-mail. Of the 312 surveys, 79 responses were received and none of them were incomplete. Therefore, all the 79 responses were used for the quantitative analysis which represents a useable response rate of more than 20% (the value is in lines with other entrepreneurial personality studies). At last, the survey was submitted in English.
In addition, at the beginning of the survey, some background information will be asked such as: gender (nominal variable), age (ratio variable), level of education (ordinal variable) and years of experience (ordinal variable). Age and years of business experience were measured directly through numerical variable expressed in years while gender and level of education were measured with dichotomous variables though direct questions. All the demographic characteristics of the social entrepreneurs are summarized in the following table:
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Table 3: summary of the demographic information of the 79 responses
Percent (%) Frequency
Gender
- Male 58.2 33
- Female 41.8 46
Age (in years)
- 20-24 3.8 3 - 25-30 22.8 18 - 31-35 12.7 10 - 36-40 13.9 11 - 41-45 13.9 11 - 46-50 13.9 11 - 51-55 13.9 11 - 56-60 1.3 1 - +60 3.8 3 Education
- High school Diploma 10.1 8
- Bachelor Degree 36.7 29 - Master Degree 46.8 37 - PhD. 6.3 5 Types of company - Manufacture 19 15 - High-Tech 12.7 10 - Service 45.6 36 - Others 22.8 18
Company’s tenure (in years)
- Less than 3 39 49.4
- 4 - 6 22 27.8
- 7 - 10 9 11.4
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3.2. Measures
Drawing upon previous studies (Jones and Paulhus, 2001), prosocial motivation and the dark triad were measured using a five-point Likert-style scales, responses ranged from 1 = “strongly disagree”, through 3 = “neither agree or disagree”, to 5 = “strongly agree”. (to see the full scales used, go to the Appendix A)
Pro-social Motivation. The pro-social motivation was measured by using and adapted scale from Grant (2008) with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.90 (Grant, 2008) (E.g. Why are you motivated at work?). Score were averaged for each response, with higher score reflecting greater levels of pro-social motivation.
Narcissism. Narcissism was being measured by using the SD3 for Dark Triad developed by Jones and Paulhus (2013) with a Cronbach's alpha of 0,71. (Jones and Paulhus, 2013) (E.g. I know I am a special person because everyone keeps telling me so)
Machiavellianism. Machiavellianism was being measured by using the SD3 for Dark Triad developed by Jones and Paulhus (2013) with a Cronbach's alpha of 0,77. (Jones and Paulhus, 2013) (E.g. Most people can be manipulated).
Psychopathy. Psychopathy was being measured by using the SD3 for Dark Triad developed by Jones and Paulhus (2013) with a Cronbach's alpha of 0,80 (Jones and Paulhus, 2013). (E.g. I’ll say anything to get what I want)
Business Performance. The last construct was measured by using the scale based on the work of Murphy et al. (1996, cited by Li et al., 2006). Firm’s performance was evaluated in three dimensions: efficiency, growth and profit with the respectively Cronbach’s alpha of 0.80, 0.86, 0.80 (Li et. al., 2006) (E.g. My firm usually satisfied with return of investment (efficiency), My firm usually satisfied with sale growth (growth), and My firm usually satisfied with gross profit margin (profit)).
3.3. Analytical strategy
Data were collected by means of an online survey. The survey started on May 22th 2017 and concluded after 4 weeks on June 18th, 2017. A database was constructed from the questionnaires and treated statistically with SPSS v.24 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences). Consequently, I investigated the positive relationship between Pro-social Motivation and Business Performance which is moderated positively by Narcissism and negatively by Machiavellianism and Psychopathy. Pro-social Motivation is the independent variable, Business performance (efficiency, growth and profit) is the dependent variable and this relation is moderated positively by the variable Narcissism
26 and negatively by the variables Machiavellianism and Psychopathy. The main hypothesis is that social entrepreneurs with high pro-social motivation are more likely to obtain superior business performances. However, some personality traits such as Machiavellianism and Psychopathy can constrain this relationship. If the social entrepreneur has high level of Machiavellianism or Psychopathy, it could restrain the intensity of the relationship between pro-social motivation and business performance. On the contrary, Narcissism seems to have a positive effect on the main relationship: if the social entrepreneur is high in narcissism, this could lead to high level of pro-social motivation and therefore obtain superior business performances.
First of all, a check of frequencies for each variable had been made to examine errors in the data entry and potential missing data. No errors were found and no missing data. The recoding of counter-indicative items was applied to some items in Narcissism and Psychopathy, in particular, rNarc2, rNarc6, rNarc8, rPsy2 and rPsy7, have been recoded and now represent as Narc2, Narc6, Narc8, Psy2 and Psy7. After recoding the reverse coded items, scale reliabilities, descriptive statistics, skewness, kurtosis and normality tests were computed. From the total seven variables, only Narcissism, Psychopathy and Machiavellianism and Business Performance Efficiency were normally distributed. The majority of the respondents reported high level of pro-social motivation and high score were obtained on the scale of business performance. The absence of normal distribution in these variables can be explained because all the participants were social entrepreneurs which means that they were highly motivated from their social causes of helping other and solve social problems with their businesses. As well, all the participants rated their company with high business performances which reinforce the main. Therefore, a variable transformation technique was used to normalize these distributions. Business Performance Growth and Profit had a moderate negative skewness and were normalize using the variable transformation formula X* =√(K-X) in which K is the highest value of the variable X, +1. While Pro-social Motivation had a substantial negative skewness and it was normalize using the formula X*=Log10(K-X). After that an outliner check was performed in order to remove extremely high or extremely low values in one variable but no outliners were found.
The last preliminary step was the reliability test which was conducted of all the items of variables Pro-social Motivation, Business Performance (Profit, Growth and Efficiency), Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy. Only Pro-social motivation and Business Performance a Cronbach’s alpha above .70 which confirms high reliability and a good scale has been used. (Pro-social motivation α=.898 and Business performance: Efficiency α=.846, Growth α=.736 and Profit α=.780). In addition, the corrected item-total correlations indicate that all the items have a good
27 correlation with the total score of the scale (all above .30). However, Narcissism, Psychopathy and Machiavellianism were all below .70. Cronbach's alpha is a measure of the internal consistency of the measure. A score below .70 suggests that the items within the tool may not be measuring the same underlying construct. Therefore, I run a correlation matrix and I identified the items that do not correlate with other items with a co-efficient below .30. Items that are poorly correlated with other items or the total score become candidates for removal. In conclusion, for the construct Narcissism with a Cronbach’s alpha of .648 I found out the variable “I feel embarrassed if someone compliments me” had a Corrected Item-Total Correlation value of .05 and consequently it was removed and the new Cronbach’s alpha of Narcissism turn into 0.672. Even though it still remains below .70, the value is acceptable because all the other Corrected Item-Total Correlation of the others variable were above .30. The same procedure was used for the construct Machiavellianism with α=.659. The variable “It’s not wise to tell your secrets” had Corrected Item-Total Correlation value of .100 and the variable “Avoid direct conflicts with others because they may be useful in the future” had a value of .227 were removed. The variable “You should wait for the right time to get back at people” had a Corrected Item-Total Correlation of .282 and therefore, it was removed. The new Cronbach’s alpha of Machiavellianism becomes .702. For the last construct, Psychopathy had an initial Cronbach’s alpha of .614. The variables “I avoid dangerous situations” and “I have never gotten into troubles with the law” were removed (Corrected Item-Total Correlation values, respectively, .071 and 0.84). The new Cronbach’s value for Psychopathy is 0.722.
For testing the hypotheses, regression analyses were undertaken to test the hypothesized moderation effects between the variables. The direct relationship between Pro-social motivation and Business Performance was examined using a hierarchical regression. The regression analysis conducted using Business Performance as dependent variable. In step 1, the control variables gender, age, education level, years of experience were entered into the equation. In step 2, other two control variables related to the business were introduced and in the last step (Step 3) the dark triad (Psychopathy, Narcissism and Machiavellianism) were inserted into the model. Relative Weight Analysis (RWA) was conducted to examine the relative importance of the independent variable’s ability to explain variance in each dependent variable (In term of percentage of R2). The results from RWA can be considered as better than comparing regression coefficients because of multicollinearity issues.
28 4. Results
In this section, the results of the analysis will be present. First of all, the correlation matrix will be discussed, followed by the analysis of the direct effect between Pro-social motivation and Business Performance and, the last, the moderation effects of the Dark Triad will be present.
4.1. Correlation Analysis
First of all, scale means have been computer for Pro-social Motivation, Business Performance, Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy and they were name respectively PMTot, BFEffTot, BFGrowTot, BFProTot, NarcTot, MachTot and PsyTot. Second of all, the correlation matrix has been developed to investigate the correlation between two variables. This matrix is particular useful because it shows the correlation coefficient which measures the strength and the direction of a liner relationship between pairs of continuous variables. In other words, the Pearson Correlation evaluate if there is a statistical evidence for a linear relationship, indeed, the p-value tells us whether the correlation (Pearson Correlation value) is statistically significant or not.
Table 4 shows an overview of the descriptive statistics, correlations and scale of reliabilities of all the thirteen variables. The first surprising result was that Pro-social motivation and Business Performance in all the three aspects, were not significant correlated as the first hypothesis assumes. Thus, there are two possible explanations of these results. First, the lack of correlation could be caused by a lack of statistical power because the sample was not large enough to detect if the correlation was statistically significant. The second explanation assumes that there could be a lack of linearity. This type of matrix only measures linear relationships; however, some relation could be U/shaped or non/linear but they are not detected by the correlation analysis. Consequently, it could be plausible that the relationship between Pro-social Motivation and Business performance has a U-shape (it will discuss in the discussion section). However, a lack of correlation does not imply a lack of causation, which it will be test later. Another observation derived from the table is that Pro-social motivation is negatively significant correlated with Machiavellianism (r=-.25, p <.05) and Psychopathy (r=.35, p < .01). No significant correlation has been found with Narcissism. In addition, as expected, Business Performance for Efficiency was significant correlated with Business Performance for both Growth (r=.47, p <.01) and Profit (r=-.70, p <.01), however none of the variable of the Dark Triad was significant correlated with Business Performance. At last, Machiavellianism (r=.38, p <.01) and Psychopathy (r=35, p <.01) were significant correlated with Narcissism. In summary, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy were found to be a potent predictor of positive Pro-social Motivation.
27
Table 4: Means (M), Standard Deviations (SD) and Correlations
Variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 1. Gender 1.58 .50 - 2. Age 39.67 11.05 .34** - 3. Education level 2.49 .77 .01 .07 - 4. Years of Experience 12.84 10.83 .37** .75** -.12 - 5. Type of Company 2.72 1.02 -.11 -.07 -.00 -.13 - 6. Company’s age 1.85 1.03 .23* .26* -.15 .42** -.13 - 7. Pro-social Motivation 4.49 .58 -.23* .06 -.08 -.00 .04 -.27* (.90) 8. BF Efficiency 3.60 .69 -.07 -.15 -.02 -.17 -.07 .08 -.06 (.85) 9. BF Growth 3.64 .71 -.14 -.28* -.28* -.22 .03 .12 -.10 .47** (.74) 10. BF Profit 3.68 .70 -.11 -.28* -.09 -.24* -.13 .12 -.11 .70** .59** (.78) 11. Narcissism 3.01 .55 .13 -.11 .12 -.01 -.19 -.07 -.17 .16 .15 .15 (.67) 12. Machiavellianism 2.51 .59 .14 -.20 .04 -.20 .07 -.03 -.25* .08 .11 -.00 .38** (.70) 13. Psychopathy 1.93 .59 .28* .02 -.06 -.02 -.10 .04 -.35** -.02 .03 -.08 .35** .45** (.72)
Note: N=79. Reliabilities are reported along the diagonal - BF (Business Performance) ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)
